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I can almost understand both sides, but man, is this scary to hear.
My dog just went to a specialist for achilles tendon tears, and to a new primary vet, who found a mast cell tumor. The tumor had been examined by two other vets, and pronounced nothing to worry about. The 3rd vet spent all our time focusing on her leg injury (which is quality of life, as he felt it may be helped, but would never be normal) and said he didn't have time that day to check the growth, and that it looked fine, and was far less important than getting care for the leg. The growth, however, turned out to be a mast cell tumor, which vet #4 correctly diagnosed and removed (so that wasn't quality of life, that could have resulted in end of life without a diagnosis).
The specialty clinic's cost for removing the tumor was quoted at $2500 (an additional 1000 to add the tendon repair, but if it didn't hold, then we'd need to re-do that potentially). The new primary vet I'd found who diagnosed it correctly quoted $800 for the tumor removal. If you add up all the costs from the vet visits that missed the tumor, and its eventual removal, it is quite a chunk of change. Was the vet's surgery of lessor cost as through or good as it would have been with the specialist? I don't know, but this is the route I decided to go. While expensive, I've used the specialty clinic before and they are highly skilled; and the new PCV was very very good as well (and his staff was wonderful).
The reason I even kept going back about this supposedly okay growth was due to a prior experience - my last dog before this had a suspicious growth, which I was assured was nothing, but I didn't like the looks of it and vet #3 correctly diagnosed it as a mast cell tumor (thankfully, grade 1 still), and removed it. That was my first encounter with these type of growths. The safe way to know is to aspirate them, but that adds more expense, and if you have a dog that is prone to growing dozens of harmless fatty tumors, that could add up.
I don't begrudge vets their fees for their time - and right now, am very thankful I was able to find some good ones, that I have the money to treat her, and hopefully have given my girl more time with us (a grade 2 but very unaggressive - did an expanded histology from the path people). But it can all add up quickly, so I can understand the desperation this man may have felt. I saw people at the specialty clinic making payments on bills totalling thousands of dollars, and overheard conversations about coming back for a second surgery because the first had failed.
If you didn't have the resources that some of these clients had, what can you do except watch your beloved dog die?
Last edited by sugarsugar; 02-07-2010 at 09:42 AM..
What about care credit that you can use? Believe me, I might be facing some fairly large costs myself here in the very near future. One thing that would NOT occur to me is to do my own surgery. I would turn my dog over to a rescue that would handle her health issues first.
Do YOU want to be operated on without the benefit of painkillers or anesthesia?
I have a friend who actually called me once and asked me if I could "snag" some suture materials so he could stitch up his dog, who had gotten into a fight...(at the time I was vet tech.)...I was horrified that he would even consider doing something like that himself! I explained that even I would not attempt such a procedure though I'd assisted in them plenty of times...thankfully I convinced him pretty quickly to take the dog to his daytime vet!
I think that where there is a will, there is a way, and I know a lot of people who do without things in order to properly care for their pets. I know I would.
But in the larger world, not everyone feels the same.
I think it's pretty pompous (sp?) of the vet to turn his nose up at the man and call him a criminal. What this dog owner did, was out of love. If anything, as a vet, I would feel horribly guilty that he loved this dog so much to even entertain taking matters into his own hands to fix this.
Was it wrong for him to try to operate on his dog by himself without an education back it? .... probably.
Was it not more of an offense that the very world that raised this dog owner has disgraced this man, after denying him the solution to his problems when it came down to lack of money? ...definately.
Location: Montreal -> CT -> MA -> Montreal -> Ottawa
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Marylandkitten
I think it's pretty pompous (sp?) of the vet to turn his nose up at the man and call him a criminal. What this dog owner did, was out of love. If anything, as a vet, I would feel horribly guilty that he loved this dog so much to even entertain taking matters into his own hands to fix this.
Was it wrong for him to try to operate on his dog by himself without an education back it? .... probably.
Was it not more of an offense that the very world that raised this dog owner has disgraced this man, after denying him the solution to his problems when it came down to lack of money? ...definately.
Very good points!
(and you did spell "pompous" correctly )
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